On April 6, Prime Minister John Howard and minister for Aboriginal affairs Senator John Herron were forced to apologise over the federal government submission made to the Senate Legal and Constitutional References Committee's inquiry into the stolen generations. Howard and Herron did not apologise for the content of the submission, only for any "hurt" it caused.
Eighty of the 300 to 400 members of the stolen generations and their supporters who protested that day outside Parliament House were allowed into the public gallery to hear the "apology".
Herron has said that Australian governments' practise of removing Aboriginal children from their families, officially carried out from the early 1900s until 1970, affected "no more than 10%" of Aboriginal people. They were mostly separated for "good" reasons, he argues.
Defending the submission, the minister assisting the prime minister on reconciliation, Philip Ruddock, said on ABC-TV's Lateline on April 3, "If you look at a generation, you are looking at all people of that age. The question is, 'Do you allege that all people of a particular age were affected by these measures?'. The actual answer is no."
The NSW Aboriginal Land Council called for Herron's resignation and demanded that Howard apologise for his minister's dereliction of duty.
"Herron's words fly in the face of documented evidence — it's called fudging the figures and politicians are famous for it", said Rod Towney, NSW ALC chairperson. "But to officially submit the government's position by saying that there was never a generation of stolen children because it was no more than 10% is playing semantics with people's lives."
Towney said, "Each and every Aboriginal family has lived through these experiences and we all see and feel the effects to this day. I can't see how denying the evil of a government policy which has touched every Aboriginal family can possibly help this country progress."
Naomi Mayers, chairperson of the Aboriginal Health and Medical Research Council of NSW, called in a media release for Herron to be removed from the portfolio due to his "ineptness" and "unsuitability". She pointed out that Australian governments' cruel and inhumane practice of forcibly removing Aboriginal children from their families was well documented and acknowledged to have been based on assimilationist policies aimed at eradicating Aboriginal people.
"Herron's remarks were callous and misguided", Mayers said. "The trauma for thousands of Aboriginal children and their families continues to impact on the health and well-being of the Aboriginal community ... If 10% of the wider Australian population were systematically removed from their families over several generations, it would invoke public outcry and give grounds for international condemnation."
Peter Yu, executive director of the Kimberley Land Council, disputed Ruddock's assertion that the policy of removing children is only now inappropriate, and that at the time it was "essentially lawful". Yu wrote in the Australian on April 3, "[The policy was] not the action of well-meaning individuals, but the consequence of considered government policy".
He said the 1938 decision by Aboriginal affairs ministers to adopt the policy, especially for children of mixed descent, was aimed at indigenous people's "biological absorption" into the broader Australian population. The remaining Aboriginal people would pass away over successive generations.
"What sort of government would try to impose a mathematical formula on the traumatic legacy of colonisation?", Yu asked. "The same sort of government that would seek to remove itself from international obligations on racial discrimination, that rejects calls to end the appalling practice of mandatory sentencing and ignores UN requests to review its native title laws because they are discriminatory ...
"There is no secret about the intentions of past government policy to 'solve' the Aboriginal 'problem' through child removal, denial of language and cultural practice, and dispossession from traditional lands", Yu pointed out. "It seems that the Howard government is similarly unconcerned about the denial of indigenous rights."
Mayer told Green Left Weekly that the government does not want to recognise the facts of the stolen generations because it might mean that it must pay compensation. Herron's comments on the ABC-TV's 7.30 Report on April 3 confirm this. "I don't think the Australian taxpayer would be prepared for compensation to be given to anybody, regardless of their proof or not of whether they were forcibly removed", he said.
Mayer believes that the increase in overt government racism in the past few months serves several purposes, principally to inflame racism, especially in country areas, before the federal election so as to divert attention from the GST, further Telstra privatisation and the problems people are experiencing in the bush.
There have been calls for the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation's May 28 Corroboree 2000 reconciliation event to be made into a protest. Linda Burney, chairperson of the NSW State Reconciliation Committee, was reported in the April 4 Sydney Morning Herald as saying that if the CAR proceeded with its plan to welcome Howard and Herron at the event, the NSW committee "would find it difficult to participate".
Jackie Huggins, an executive member of the CAR, said that it would not be possible to refuse Howard and Herron's participation because they were invited only two months ago. Huggins told Green Left that if Howard was not invited, it would be "a total cop-out for him and a great disservice to those who attend". He should come and be made to account to the supporters of reconciliation, native title and the stolen generations, she said.
Huggins said that the "members of the stolen generations are not going to let this humiliation get them down. They will act instead with great dignity, as do many Aboriginal Australians across this country.
"Obviously, people who are frustrated ... are going to take to the streets. This feeling has been building up over the past few weeks ... I support their democratic right to demonstrate, and many of the elders have told me that their aim is peaceful, non-violent protest." Members of Brisbane's indigenous community are planning to join protests at the September Olympics Games in Sydney, she said.
Trevor Close from the United Githabul Tribal Nation Aboriginal Corporation was at the April 6 Canberra protest. He told Green Left that he thought the recent increase in racist moves by the federal government was a deliberate attempt to incite Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal supporters of reconciliation to protest violently before the Olympic Games and thereby burn out the anger early so that the games themselves will be peaceful. He also said that Howard should be present at the Corroboree 2000 events to hear what the people have to say.
Yu was optimistic for the long term: "The social engineering policies that resulted in the stolen generations failed in their objective of finishing us off as peoples. So will the Howard government's efforts to return the collective Australian imagination to a terra nullius of spirit ... Howard and Herron will not be here forever — Aboriginal Australians will."